Fixing Merfolk

Originally I built my merfolk deck along the same lines as my druid deck; quick to hit but little defense. When I decided to run this deck at last weeks Friday Night Magic tournament I added in some control and mill cards to give me more options mid and late game. I added 2 Remove Soul, 2 Negate, 2 Coordinated Barrage, 3 Drowner of Secrets. I kept 2 or 3 Judge of Currents in the main deck just in case and he was a welcome sight against several Red/Green Beatdown variants. I also added in 2 Silvergill Dousers to keep cards like Chameleon Colossus at bay until I could manage to overrun them with tokens or mill them out. A couple games I managed to mill my opponents deck down without the addition of Grimoire Thief (which I forgot to add in before leaving my apartment :S). Oblivion Ring seemed to be the card of the night and I spent most of my negates trying to keep my Drowners and Merrow Reejerey in play. All in all my favorite card of the night was Mirrorweave. It saved my hide countless times especially against aggro decks. I would just wait until they swung out with all of their 3/3s and bigger, Mirrorweave one of my tokens and wipe their side of the board by blocking with my tokens. A perfect example of how good this card really is happened during the last match of the night:

I have a ~5 1/1 tokens, a Douser, Drowner, and two Merrow Commerce out and I'm trying to mill my opponent before he has time to beat me down with red/green goblins. I'm staring down the business ends of two Boartusk Lieges and a Boggart Ram-Gang who looked mighty hungry and my Merfolk seemed to be on the menu. A quick check of my hand showed a shiny Mirrorweave and enough mana to play it. I checked my side of the board and then his. I did some mental math estimating I needed to stall him for just one more turn to be able to mill him out. As I figured he turns his board sideways declaring that he was attacking me with everything he had. I quickly tapped four and Mirrorweaved my Douser and tapped 3 of my creatures to reduce their enemy's power to zero. I then waited for him to finish his turn and for my creatures to return to normal. After untapping, tapping to mill, untapping for one of my Commerce, re-tapping to mill, untapping for the other Commerce, re-tapping to mill again I had just enough to mill him out.

To make a long story even longer adding control elements to the deck went a long way towards increasing its effectiveness and resilience. Even though my record wasn't the greatest (2 Wins-2 Losses-1 Tie) I was very pleased with the performance of the deck in it's current form and with my play throughout the night. I will add "before" and "after" decklists when I get home tonight!